Time-resolved measurement of Landau-Zener tunneling in periodic potentials

TL;DR

This paper presents time-resolved experimental measurements of Landau-Zener tunneling in Bose-Einstein condensates within optical lattices, revealing detailed dynamics and the influence of momentum width on tunneling behavior.

Contribution

First experimental observation of time-resolved Landau-Zener tunneling in Bose-Einstein condensates with analysis of momentum width effects.

Findings

Resolved step-like time dependence of band populations

Measured tunneling probabilities in adiabatic and diabatic bases

Identified the impact of momentum width on tunneling step width

Abstract

We report time-resolved measurements of Landau-Zener tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in accelerated optical lattices, clearly resolving the step-like time dependence of the band populations. Using different experimental protocols we were able to measure the tunneling probability both in the adiabatic and in the diabatic bases of the system. We also experimentally determine the contribution of the momentum width of the Bose condensates to the width of the tunneling steps and discuss the implications for measuring the jump time in the Landau-Zener problem.